Commercial Real Estate Brokers – Call it as you see it with Stale and Redundant Listings
Some commercial property listings stay on the market for too long. They are promoted poorly or inadequately. The end result is something that just about every potential buyer or tenant has heard about. So why is the property still on the market anyway?
What’s the issues?
Most stale or ‘dead’ listings are created by a series of poor choices on the part of the agent and or the client. The most common problems with these listings are a combination of some or all of these facts:
- Incorrect method of marketing
- Poor choice of method of sale or lease
- Little local promotion by the agent or broker
- Lack of offers coming forward
- Incorrectly handled negotiations
- A client that fails to listen to the realities of the location and the property
- Poor property presentation, etc
So the list can go on and I am sure you will have seen plenty of variations on ‘stale’ and redundant listings. So the question is, do you want to take on a listing that has been on the market for too long and has been ‘ flogged’ by just about every agent and broker in town? Your time is precious and the listing choices that you make will impact your time. Protect your time by selling your services to the best clients that are realistic with their property problem.
Stale Listing Strategy?
If you are going to take on a listing of this type, consider the following strategies to help you improve the process, the potential enquiries, and the inspections generated:
- Take the property off the market immediately so you can think about strategies and repositioning issues.
- Look at the competing listings so you understand what the competing properties are doing both in price and time on market.
- Think about the property from a buyers or tenants perspective. How does it present visually and physically? Are there issues that deter people from inspecting or making offers? It pays to resolve property problems before you run the advertising and create inspections. Excuses cannot be made for poor property presentation.
- What about the upside of the property cash flow and future? If the property is of an ‘investment’ nature, take the time to investigate all tenant leases and the rental cash flows. Look for the positives and the negatives in the tenant mix. Perhaps you can work through some tenant and lease changes to make the property more attractive in the future?
- Make a list of things that you see both from a strengths and weaknesses perspective. Will the strengths give you some leverage with your intended marketing? Have any of the strengths been omitted from previous campaigns?
- Are there any weaknesses in the property that could be considered an ‘absolute deal breaker’? If such problems exist it would pay to resolve those problems before the marketing campaign starts again.
- Define the target market both by location and type. That definition will help you build the next marketing campaign.
- How can you position the property? There has to be a central message and a list of property features that pull in the target market.
As you can see there is some work to be done if you are to take an old property listing that is ‘stale’ and repackage the listing for future opportunity.
You can get plenty of listing tips for stale listings in our eCourse right here.
